Where those associated with Western films from around the world are laid to rest.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

RIP Richard Portman

Oscar-winning sound guru Richard Portman dies at 82

Tallahassee Democrat

By Mark Hinson

Academy Award-winner and retired Florida State film
school professor Richard Portman, who mixed the sound for such famed movies as
“Star Wars” (1977) and “Harold and Maude” (1971), died Saturday night at his
home in Betton Hills. He was 82. Portman’s death followed after a fall, a
broken hip and other medical complications.

“He was an icon of his craft of motion picture sound
re-recording, recognized with the highest honors of his field,” daughter
Jennifer Portman wrote on her Facebook page. “He was eccentric, irreverent and
real.”

The tall, lanky Portman, who preferred to wear kaftans
and a long braided pony tail down his back, was, indeed, hard to miss. He was a
walking contradiction: an ex-Marine with hippie tendencies who developed his
own free-flowing philosophy about life but was a stickler when it came to
punctuality. Anyone invited to Portman’s house for dinner knew to show up at 7
p.m. sharp, not 7:05 p.m.

“His presence is still here,” wife Jackie Portman said on
Sunday morning as she stood in the living room of their home. “It’s still
surreal. This is going to take some time.”

Portman was born in Los Angeles. He was the son of sound
engineer Clem Portman, who worked on such classics as “King Kong” (1933),
“Citizen Kane” (1941) and “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946).

“I was never very good in school,” the younger Portman
wrote in his unpublished memoir, humorously titled “They Wanted A Louder Gun.”
“I felt alien and different from my school mates and did poorly. I was an
idiot. I retreated deep into a dream world where I could be alone.”

After serving five years in the U.S. Marine Corps during
the Korean War, Portman came home in 1957 and could not find a job. He
approached his father, who helped him get his foot in the door as a machine
loader in the re-recording room at Columbia Pictures. His father told him:
“Don’t ruin my reputation.”

Portman did not.

Over his long career in Hollywood, Portman worked on
nearly 200 films, including “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” (1971),
“Little Big Man” (1970), “Young Frankenstein” (1974) and “Paper Moon” (1973).

“I worked with Peter Bogdanovich on 'They All Laughed'
and 'Daisy Miller' - which wasn't a very good film," Portman told the Tallahassee
Democrat in 2007. "I think 'Paper Moon' is his masterpiece. I thought it
was better than 'The Last Picture Show.’ It ('Paper Moon') was the one of the
few movies I worked on that I went back to see in the theater. I wanted to make
sure they got it right. And they did."

He also developed a close working relationship with
director Robert Altman and helped perfect the overlapping, multi-tracking
dialogue style in such films as “Nashville” (1975) and “3 Women” (1977).

“Altman’s film family were free-spirited people who liked
to have fun,” Portman wrote in “They Wanted A Louder Gun.” “Others might say
they were lawless lunatics who should be in jail. I developed a kinship with
them right away.”

Although Portman loved to sip a cold beer, he was serious
about his job. He was nominated for 11 Academy Awards for his work on “Kotch”
(1971), “The Godfather” (1972), “The Candidate” (1972), “Paper Moon,” “The Day
of the Dolphin” (1973), “Young Frankenstein,” “Funny Lady” (1975), “Coal
Miner’s Daughter” (1980), “On Golden Pond” (1981) and “The River” (1984). He
brought home the Oscar for the Vietnam War movie “The Deer Hunter” (1978). The
statue was proudly displayed on the mantel over his fireplace.

Along the way in Hollywood, Portman met a young
writer-director-producer named Jack Conrad while mixing the sound on Conrad’s
road movie “Country Blue” (1973), which was filmed in North Florida and South
Georgia. Conrad, a Tallahassee native, told Portman about the city’s lush
environment and its fabled seven hills. In the late ‘80s, Conrad helped Portman
line up a one-man show of the sound-mixer’s bright, colorful, cartoon-style
paintings at the LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts. Portman took a liking to
Tallahassee.

In 1995, he joined the faculty at the Florida State film
school and became a beloved educator, whom the students called Dr. Zero, a name
he relished. He was instrumental in creating the film school.

“I'm a teacher now and I'm happy,” Portman told the
Tallahassee Democrat in 1998. “I get to be young again with my students. If
nothing else, Florida State will have the only film school in the nation where
directors learn sound from the start. That's never been done. When I came
along, and we needed something, we just invented it ourselves. But this is soon
going to be the finest film program in the country. You wait and see. Gosh, I
suddenly sound like a good advertisement for the FSU film school. But it's
true. You can write that down."

He was right. This year, Florida State film school
graduate Barry Jenkins, who was taught by Portman, garnered eight Oscar
nominations for his movie “Moonlight,” including best director and best
picture.

In 1998, Portman was honored with a lifetime achievement
award from the Cinema Audio Society. As part of a video tribute, lauded film
editor Walter Murch told a story involving “Star Wars.” Jennifer Portman, who
works as the news director for the Tallahassee Democrat, wrote about it in 2015
when another “Star Wars” film opened at the box office. It went like this:

“He (Murch) told the story about how my grandfather
developed a naming convention for organizing sound reels. Before digital sound
– back when the visual action and its accompanying sound were on tangible
magnetic film, stored on giant metal reels – he passed along to my dad the
technique of identifying parts of the working picture as ‘reel two, dialogue
two.’ They shortened it when speaking aloud.”

In the the early ‘70s, when Murch was working in the
dubbing room with director George Lucas on “American Graffiti” (1973), he used
the Portman shorthand and said, “R2-D2.”

Lucas, who was nodding off in the dubbing room, woke up.

"What did you say?" Murch recalled Lucas
saying.

Murch replied: "R2-D2."

Lucas, who was writing ‘Star Wars’ at the time, scrawled
it in his notebook. Movie history was made.

A memorial for Portman is being planned during the early
spring, around his birthday on April 2, potentially in Railroad Square Art
Park.

“I think we’re going to show ‘Harold and Maude,’ because
he loved that film so much,” Jackie Portman said. “And then if anyone wants to
get up and say anything, they are welcome.”

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.